The End Times have come for the Pinboard.in bookmarking service

In the years following the Great Recession, from 2010 to 2013, many web services went offline. In retrospect that was the end of the Berners-Lee web.

During that time, starting in 12/29/2011, I started using Maciej Cegłowski's Pinboard bookmarking site as a kind of micro blog. 

Pinboard filled part of the Google Reader Social vacuum. There were various apps and services around pinboard, in addition to IFTTT, that made that feasible. My Pinboard 's' posts were published to Twitter, then app.net, and most recently Mastodon (and probably a few other services too). They were also archived in kateva.org/sh. 

Pinboard imported my old Google Reader social bookmarks so it's a pretty complete set of things I shared, mostly tech and events that seemed to have potential lasting meaning. There are over 50,000 pins now. There were apps written for Pinboard, creating a small ecosystem of added value.

I'm still on my original subscription plan - about $20 a year or so. It ends in Feb 2025 and I won't be renewing. I feel like it's 2013 again.

Over the past few years there have been a slowly increasing number of pinboard outages with less communication. While debugging the last outage I purged my local history from the 3rd party Pins iOS app and found that Pinboard was throttling their download API. I could download only 100 of my 50,000 or so pins. (It's still easy to download the whole set as a file). 

That's ominous, but more importantly Pinboard is a one person show and that person is no longer responding to support emails. Maciej is no longer active on social media that I know of. His Pinboard.in support forum has been quiescent for years. I'll be researching my micro blog options and I'll write about what I come up with on tech.kateva.org. 

10 years is an eternity on the web. Pinboard had a good run, but it too is passing. I have my archives and you can still download JSON or HTM versions of past bookmarks. I might wish for a more graceful end but Pinboard was a good service while it lasted and there is a clear data exit if not a clear replacement. Thank you, Maciej, for the value you delivered to me.

Update: via a Mastodon friend a Hacker News article on the ignominious end of Pinboard and some alternatives: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41533958

COVID Cancellation: The fight with Delta from May 1 to Aug 20, 2020

The COVID battle with Delta

1. May 1, 2020: Delta canceled a flight for daughter and I to Korea. I spoke with the Delta rep and was told we'd receive a full refund. But trouble was already brewing.
2. We were in Delta database for refund until, one day, we were not.
3. We sent complaints to DOT, MN Attorney General, and American Express
4. July 11, 200: American Express responded to our objection and refunded two tickets.
5. DOT said they'd referred our complaint back to Delta.
6. Delta refunded ONE ticket
7. American Express reversed their refund on both tickets. I tried to appeal but the appeal process said I had to phone (which is very hard to do on my schedule).
8. I replied to the DOT and Delta/DOT email addresses that one ticket remained. 
9. I was unable to get more help from AMEX. 
10. Aug 20, 2020: Delta notified a second refund and a few days later it was in my AMEX account.

There are class action suits against Delta and other airlines. Our struggle went on for almost 4 months.

My guess is Delta was managing its cash flow by paying its debts slowly. I suspect high mileage customers with flight insurance received early refunds -- because Delta knows the insurance companies would go after them. Then high mileage customers and major business buyers. After that it's who complains the most and longest. 

Delta fought payment pretty hard. I though it was over in July when AMEX refunded us, but I saw the paperwork Delta sent AMEX. They really didn't want to pay. 

In the end I think the DOT complaint did the trick. I never heard from the MN state attorney general.

I hope the class action suits succeed.

Sorrow for the Long Tail - the memory machine I will never see

There are several software products I want nobody will build.

For example, I want a “screen saver” that will randomly select from a collection of video and still images and display them across multiple screens.

Pretty much like Apple’s annoying [1] screen saver, but for video it would randomly select a xx second file segment and play that without sound.

I don’t think anyone will ever build this. It’s too hard to do [2] and there’s no money in it. Only a small number of people would pay, say, $20 for this. Maybe 1 in a 1000. After expenses and marketing it would be hard to earn even a few thousand dollars.

Which reminds us of the false promise of The Long Tail. Those were the days that Netflix had a huge catalogue of barely viewed movies [3] that were often very fine. We thought there would be business for the interests of the 0.1%. That didn’t happen.

This is why I’ve given up on trying to predict the future ...

--

[1] Whenever macOS cannot connect to the folder hosted on my NAS it reverts to the default collection. I need to restore my share and I’ve never been able to find an automated way to do that. On iOS things are much worse. Speaking of products I want, I’d pay $20 for a macOS utility that that simply reset my screen saver to my preferred share.

[2] We never thought software development would keep getting harder. We used to think there would be a set of composable tools we could all use (OpenDoc, AppleScript, etc). We expected a much more advanced version of what we had on DOS or Unix in the 80s or the early 90s web. Instead we got AngularJS.

[3] In the mailer days our kids movies were unplayable due to disc damage about half the time. Finally gave up on that.

Quicken for Mac -- why vendors are going to screw-up subscription pricing for software services

We’ve been using Quicken for Mac for the past year. I’m satisfied with the software, but I no longer trust their pricing and renewal.

We paid $60 for Quicken for Mac 2015 on 7/31/2015.  On 1/8/2017 we paid $48.41, presumably for 1 year of subscription service. On 12/31/2017 we paid $32.35; we probably switched from a “deluxe” plan to a basic plan.

Today I received an email requesting renewal:

Your Quicken membership will expire on 12/31/2018. In order to continue enjoying all of the benefits of Quicken, including connected services such as bank downloads, stock price updates, account sync, and free phone support, please click here to renew your plan.

The link goes, however, to Quicken for Windows where we are shown as “deluxe” plan for $50.

Ok, so that’s presumably a mistake — albeit a bad mistake. When I go to https://www.quicken.com/mac/compare I can see the Mac plans - Starter at $35 (so probably a 15% price hike from last year) and “most popular” Deluxe for $50. I can’t compare to last year but it looks like most of the features added in the past year or so require the “deluxe” option now.

Which leads me to reconsider my previously relatively positive attitude towards software subscriptions.

I’ve been generally in favor of subscription pricing for software. I think Microsoft has done a great job with Office 365. It does, however, come with temptations for vendors. Subscription pricing makes it too easy to hide price increases and game features. It promotes “information asymmetry”.

I think Quicken has fallen for that trap.

I don’t trust them now.

We are evaluating options.

 

 

Amazon reviews now unreliable - negative reviews filtered (Anker example)

Amazon reviews have long been helpful to me, and were once a big part of Amazon’s value proposition.

That is no longer true. Amazon is filtering out negative reviews.

I learned this after attempting to review Anker bluetooth earbuds I bought for Emily’s birthday. The power switch was defective. That wasn’t a complete surprise, I have a similar pair and I often have to push 2 or 3 times. Anker should have spent another 10 cents on that part.

Amazon made the return easy, but when I tried to write a review I got this notice:

“Sorry we are unable to accept reviews for this product …”

I then switched to Emily’s account. There I was at able to start a review, and even able to give in a two star overall rating. When I clicked 1 star for material quality however the “unable to accept reviews” notification appeared:

This is, of course, worse than if Amazon removed all product reviews. They are promoting systemic bias in their closed world. The Fox model is catching on elsewhere, Apple is doing something similar with the Mac App store.

How to build a safe and sane social network

This is how to build a safe, sane, and sustainable social network.

1. Build it to be viable on $1/user year.
2. Sell memberships for $25/year. Each buyer gets one user license and contributes 24 to the free pool.
3. Donors can buy an unlimited number of free-pool memberships at $1/year apiece.
4. Donors who give over $1000 a year get an optional sustainer badge.
5. Anyone can join for free if there are free memberships available.

That’s about it. Essentially it’s the public radio model.

Scientific American forgot to tell me how to activate my digital subscription. Here's how.

When I renewed Scientific American last September I had a “deal” that included 1 or 2 freebies and digital service for $40. (Today I’d use Amazon — $35, much easier to manage, great subscription manager, etc).

The magazine eventually showed up but not the free extra book/special edition and not the digital service. Maybe there was an email that went into my spam filter, but I have gotten other email from them.

Turns out I had a digital service all along. I went to their customer service site and followed a link to manage my subscription account. From there I saw a link to activate digital service. That worked.

Now I have to figure out what happened to the freebies.

Small traps to watch out for: My Merrill Lynch unexpected brokerage fees

Life has lots of small traps. Sharing this one in case it’s useful.

I once worked for a firm that granted me stock options that were held by Merrill Lynch. I appreciated them. When I left that firm I thought I’d cleaned out the brokerage account. I was warned I’d need to pay $65 a year to keep it so I wanted the money out.

I didn’t quite close it though [1], so a late dividend of $72 went into the account. I missed that — busy with other things and Emily manages our statements. When she was able to get me to look Merrill Lynch said I was too late — a yearly fee of $65 had left only $7.

This time I did close the account — so next year I won’t owe them $58!

Moral of the story — don’t leave inactive accounts lying around. They will bite you in the butt. Get the damned things closed.

[1] Actually, I thought I did close it. I wonder if the dividend reopened it. Maybe there really isn’t a useful lesson to this story … except to have as few accounts as possible so you can track the darned things …

Uninsured patients in US (mostly) no longer pay crazed "list price" for hospital care

I had no idea this situation had improved — and I follow health care fairly closely ….

The Pricing Of U.S. Hospital Services: Chaos Behind A Veil Of Secrecy Uwe Reinhardt

… Until recently, only uninsured, self-paying U.S. patients have been billed the full charges listed in hospitals’ inflated charge masters, usually on the argument that the Medicare rules required it.21 This is how even uninsured middle-class U.S. patients could find themselves paying off over many years a hospital bill of, say, $30,000 for a procedure that Medicaid would have reimbursed at only $6,000 and commercial insurers somewhere in between.22

Because uninsured patients often are members of low-income families, many of them ultimately paid only a fraction of the vastly inflated charges they were originally billed by the hospital, but only after intensive and morally troubling collection efforts by the hospital.23 After a series of searing exposes of these collection efforts in the press—notably by staff reporter Lucette Lagnado of the Wall Street Journal—Congress held hearings on these practices.24 Partly under pressure from consumers and lawmakers and partly on their own volition, many hospitals now have means-tested discounts off their charge masters for uninsured patients, which bring the prices charged the uninsured closer to those paid by commercial insurers or even below.25 Some very poor patients, of course, have received hospital care free of charge all along, on a purely charitable basis…

The whole article is essential reading for journalists and anyone working in health care policy or as a healthcare executive. Hell, I didn’t know California mandated publication of hospital charge masters. Progress really is being made.

Reinhardt, by the way, is 80 years old. Long may he write.

United airlines passenger assault: Blame the Feds.

Involuntary bumped seat leading to assault on a United Airlines passenger?

Blame the Department of Transportation (emphases mine):

If you’re involuntarily denied boarding, the Department of Transportation regulates what you’re entitled to. Here are the rules, as published by the DOT …

… If the substitute transportation is scheduled to get you to your destination more than two hours later (four hours internationally), or if the airline does not make any substitute travel arrangements for you, the compensation doubles (400% of your one-way fare, $1350 maximum)….

The US government sets the maximum compensation amount. I suspect that amount was set years ago and hasn’t changed

The article I found this in calls $1,350 “sizable”. No. That is not “sizable". I was almost bumped myself because Delta couldn’t find takers of a similar offer. $1,350 was a reasonable offer in 1990. In our 2017 lives a reasonable offer starts at $5,000. If there has to be a  limit that limit should be around $10,000 — regardless of ticket price.

So, yeah, I hate United as much as most travelers. But this one the Feds own.

Broken world: applying for a minimum wage job via a corporate HR web site

My #1 son is a special needs adult. He’s excited to start at $10/hour job running food around a sports stadium. It’s work he can do — he’s got a great sense of direction and he is reasonably fit.

The job engagement process is run by an archaic corporate web site that looks like it was built for IE 3. The site claims to support Safari but warns against Chrome. It is not useable on a smartphone.

The HR process requires managing user credentials, navigating a complex 1990s style user interface, and working around errors made by the HR staff — who probably also struggle with the software. He would not have the proverbial snowball’s chance without my ability to assume his digital identity.

Sure, #1 is below the 5th percentile on standard cognition tests — but this would have been a challenge to the 15th percentile back in the 90s. In the modern era, where most non-college young people are primarily familiar with smartphones, this is a challenge to the 30th percentile.

Which means the people might want to do this job are being shut out by the HR software created to support the job. Which probably has something to do with this.

The world is broken.

#massdisability

All our family healthcare visits are now billed as CPT E&M Code "Level Four"

Very few people will understand what that subject line means.

The short version is that the way we account for physician services was born broken in 1994 and it is now in a state of advanced collapse.

It can’t go on and it can’t stop.

Don Berwick, the best CMS administrator we’ve ever had (forced out by GOP) said this five years ago:

.. Dr. Donald Berwick, the immediate past administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which administers the Medicare program, said a small portion of the billing increase is likely caused by outright fraud, but in the majority of cases hospitals are legally boosting profits by targeting the vulnerabilities of Medicare’s payment system. “They are learning how to play the game,” Berwick said about the hospitals....

... Berwick, the former CMS head, said patients haven’t changed. What’s changed is the aggressiveness of how hospitals bill. “They are smart,” Berwick said. “If you create a payment system in which there is a premium for increasing the number of things you do or the recording of what you do, well, that’s what you’ll get.”...

See also

• Gordon's Notes: Health care reform. Be humble. Be afraid of the accounting rules. 1/2009. RBRVS. We had such good intentions.
• Gordon’s Notes: Electronic health records and payment increases: It’s not fraud. 10/2012. 

Curious Priceline credit card fraud today

Around 2:30pm Amex.app tells me a $1.00 authorization charge has been placed for Priceline. Which I didn’t do. 

I’m in a meeting so I figure I’ll follow up later.

Around 4pm I get a Google Voice transcription from “Cynthia” of the “Priceline.com fraud prevention department” asking me to call 203-441-8455. Someone has ordered two plane tickets on my Amex card.

I call Amex and they do see the transactions. They never made it to my account though, so they must have run hard into Amex fraud detection (best in the industry AFAIK). I’m issued a new card. Noteworthy: I’m told my many recurring online transactions won’t break and later in the day Apple Pay tells me it’s automatically updated my information with the new card — though I won’t get the physical card for a few days.

I do call 203-441-8455. They claim to be Priceline Fraud Prevention, but they sound awfully shady. I already knew I wasn’t going to give them any personal data so I carried on. (I later googled the number, found a 2012 ref that said this was indeed them.)

I was told two plane tickets were bought on my card — and there’s a name attached to each ticket (vaguely Indian/middle eastern sounding names). The harried woman says the plane leaves in 30 minutes so they probably can’t block them. Which is, of course, Priceline’s problem. There’s a reason I like American Express.

Note to Priceline.com: your Fraud Prevention department should sound less like an international call shop scam operation.

I checked my ancient and little used Priceline account. It had a robust password, had no transaction records, and it didn’t hold my Google Voice number. I don’t think it was hacked. I changed the password anyway.

It’s a bit weird. Why would someone use a stolen credit card to buy plane tickets when they have to match the name on the tickets to their personal ID? It seems a risky behavior! And how did Priceline get my Google Voice number? (Maybe from AMEX?) Least odd is that someone stole my AMEX credentials (the physical card is at home). I assume all my credit card numbers are available online for a few dollars.

I wonder if Priceline is a particularly effective way to buy plane tickets with a stolen credit card number? I doubt Priceline will report any of this to the police, even though they probably have the traveler’s true names.

Warfare goes to the elite

Once upon a time tens of thousands of New Yorkers moved paper from one file cabinet to another. Once upon a time there were jobs for strong bodies. Once upon a time you could be blue collar and middle class.

Once upon a time anyone could be a warrior …

Special Operations Troops Top Casualty List as U.S. Relies More on Elite Forces

… “We’ve moved out of the major combat operations business,” said Linda Robinson, a counterterrorism expert at the RAND Corporation. In recent years, she said, the military has effectively outsourced rank-and-file infantry duties to local forces in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, leaving only a cadre of highly skilled Americans to train troops and take out high-value targets…

Now the physical and cognitive elite dominate warfare. Automation and globalization — in this case drones and outsourcing to local infantry.

Trump didn’t come from nowhere.

Crisis-T: Subscribing to the NYT (and a few others)

The absolute minimal response to Crisis-T starts with financial support for quality journalism and donation to the ACLU. If you have a reasonable income and don’t do some of this then you aren’t even trying.

Today quality mainstream journalism means the New York Times and perhaps the Washington Post. The Economist might an option if you’re a conservative, but they don’t do much investigative journalism. Really, if you’re a conservative who opposes T then WaPo and the NYT are your options. (The WSJ is not an option.)

Outside of the mainstream I’m a fan and supporter of Talking Points Memo ($50/y). It’s avowedly liberal-dem but also conscientious journalism. Josh Marshall is a marvel. The New Yorker’s been doing great work, we support them as well.

Of these minimal responses the NYT is the most expensive. At one point their list subscriber price was somewhere north of $350 — though list was mostly for those who didn’t shop around. I still have a faculty price of $98/year for web and app access though I haven’t taught for years. It’s possible all you need to qualify is a .edu email.

Today the web/app price list price is $143. I’d pay that much, but you can do a yearly subscription through the iTunes app for $130. I couldn’t find the Android and Kindle subscription costs.

The best price is the student price - at $52 a year billed monthly.  Some schools may pay for digital access to all students, but if you opt into a school-funded free subscription you’re not supporting journalism. I don’t think the NYT does anything to block limited sharing of a student account. It appears the only test for the student rate is an educational address

I suspect I’m not the only subscriber who shares their account with a spouse. That’s a substantial, if improper, discount. (“Subscribers to All Digital Access at the college rate are not eligible to share their access with a family member.” — which implies other subscribers can share.)

So you have a wide range of ways to pay for digital access to the NYT - from list at $143/y to iTunes at $130/y to student/.edu at $52/y. Spousal sharing reduces the cost even more. Some rates are more proper than others, but all support investigative journalism. Pick one.

PS. Dear NYT: $100 a year with spousal sharing would be a great way to grow your readership.

Quicken for Mac 2017 -- $45 upgrade for nothing.

Quicken for Mac 2017 new features …

Compare your income and spending year over year with custom reports
Customize your budgeting goals month-by-month (12-month budget)
Pay your bills in Quicken with Quicken Bill Pay (fees apply)
Get more power on-the-go with the improved mobile app
Enjoy a new look that’s easier to use and navigate

On the other hand …

Quicken 2017 for Mac does not have certain investment reports/views, such as Performance (IRR), or Allocation by Investment.

We’ve been using 2015 and somehow I thought the 2017 update was worth paying for. Wrong. The only change I notice is new UI to learn.

That was a real waste of money. 

Intuit sold Quicken for Mac to a private equity company. The corporate headquarters are “3760 Haven Avenue, Menlo Park, CA 94025”. This is the current street view (7/2016).

We can live with Quicken 2015 - or 2017. We can do our investment allocation reports by hand. So I don’t think it’s a bad buy — once.

No upgrades though. Quicken 2017 is a classic, stinky, private equity move — fire everybody, put in a little bit of work, squeeze the market.

Stick with the version you have.

Investment things I learned in Crisis-T

All the money Trump will take from the poor and give to the rich has to go somewhere. So share prices should rise.

On the other hand, a 10% import tariff will lead to a global trade war. I’m particularly looking forward to the carbon tariffs an angry China applies to the US. So share prices should fall.

Corporate behemoths will increase monopoly and monopsony powers and fully leverage regulatory capture in an era where corruption exceeds living memory. So share prices should rise.

Trump will, WTF, resume underground nuclear testing or something like that. So share prices should fall…

Hey, I don’t know what the market is going to do. If I knew I’d hire people to manage the billions we don’t have. I do know the our equity investments have grown over the Obama years, I see some warning signs, and our portfolio is now equity-heavy. So it makes sense to rebalance. Crisis-T just means I made myself do it.

I chose to rebalance primarily in our retirement accounts, so the sales had no tax implications. I sold shares and parked the cash. In a few months, when we learn if the GOP Senate has a spine, we may sell more in our taxable accounts and shift the retirement back into equities. It’s probably not an orthodox way of proceeding, but it’s relatively easy to adjust.

Since I rarely mess with our investments (largely S&P, extended market, and whole market index funds — plus college 529 plans I don’t touch) I learned a few things. In no particular order …

1. If you sell shares in Vanguard’s ultra-cheap low overhead index funds you can’t buy back into the same fund until 30 days post-sale. So if you make it one big sale if the timing is good. Vanguard makes it easy to create a cash fund to hold sales within a particular account family.
2. Fidelity’s 401K accounts are completely different business from their HSA accounts which are unrelated to their … Oh. Heck. I don’t like Fidelity.
3. It takes a long time for these mutual fund orders to sell. They seem to sell at near market close the day after the order is placed — and the online accounts aren’t updated for a while. So you can’t do any of this under market pressure. I placed a sell order at 7pm on Thur, they were in process Friday, the web site was updated Sat pm.
4. If you’re not using a SEP IRA you might as well roll it into a regular IRA. You can always create a new SEP IRA in future.
5. Rollovers are complicated and slow. Even the Vanguard ‘concierge’ people seemed unsure about all the rules. You can borrow against 401K funds, but the investment options may be poor. You may be able to rollover a former employers 401K into a new employers 401K — but it’s all special cases. There may be a way to create an IRA account that a 401K can roll into and still be able to rollover into a 401K — but that’s just weird. Once you mix a 401K with IRA funds you can’t reverse it, it’s all IRA then. There’s a reason people spend money for tax lawyers.
6. Vanguard has a much better web site than Fidelity and Vanguard message responses are excellent.
7. Vanguard is in the midst of switching all their funds into a brokerage framework. I worry that it will increase costs but I’m naturally suspicious. I’d like to read something about why the change.

Automated purchases of index funds - how to view and discontinue at Vanguard

It’s dull stuff, but if you’re a lazy investor it’s hard to beat dollar cost average investing. Every month dollars automatically flow from a cash fund to buy index fund shares. Historically there were no fees for doing this within a fund family. We have been using this to buy Vanguard low-expense S&P index fund shares since shortly after the last crash.

I think it’s time to stop.

Except it’s hard to figure out how to stop - or how to start for that matter. In the Bogle era Vanguard used to talk about this sort of thing, but the world has moved on. There’s no money for Vanguard in these transactions. Google gave me some clues — here’s how to do it.

1. Go to My accounts > account maintenance.
2. In “Banking and money movement” click “Automatic exchange”

From here you can see active transactions, follow the directions to delete (or create) one. You can’t delete a transaction on the day it’s scheduled to occur. When you delete you get a printable transaction record and a copy is emailed to your account of record.

It's time to take those gains

I’ve seen this movie before …

How the Twinkie Made the Superrich Even Richer

… The Teacher Retirement System of Texas has invested in the fund that bought Hostess. And that fund has reaped 27 percent net during the three years it owned Hostess, significantly more than the stock market returned in that period.

“You need to get people in whom you trust and who will keep up our fund,” said Fran Plemmons, a former president of the Texas Retired Teachers Association who was a teacher and principal for 25 years. “If they do that, you need to get out of the way.”…

Extreme financial engineering. Nonsensical corporate valuations. Money from nothing. Investors pleased with “people in whom you trust”. Huge S&P gains over 10 years without matching productivity gains. P/E at about 26. Dr Evil assumes the presidency.

It’s time James.

Counterfeit Amazon

More than 90% of ‘genuine’ Apple chargers & cables sold on Amazon are fake, says Apple. Finally. Sold “Direct from Amazon” mind you.

Apple is suing the manufacturer but, curiously, not Amazon. I wonder if that settlement will be out of court — and not necessarily monetary. This has been going on for a long time…

• Gordon’s Notes: Counterfeit bicycle components and my defective “Shimano” pedals 7/2015
• Amazon’s counterfeit problems finally make the news. 7/2016
• So how does Amazon get away selling counterfeit Apple 30 pin cables? 1/2014
• Belkin listing on Amazon advises on counterfeit detection. 2/2013
• “Amazon isn’t legally responsible for keeping counterfeit material off the site” 7/2016

I do hope Amazon will pay for this — one way or another. They ripped off a lot of people.